Three years ago, amidst the heat of the pandemic, when many businesses were falling apart, and employees were laid off, people were rushing to create their own businesses. They are exploring their hobbies and trying to find ways to turn it into a profitable business. Thousands of small businesses are popping up online, with many of them selling handmade products and art projects.
Among these new businesses, a lot of 3D printing creators are also looking for ways to turn their 3D printing hobbies into viable businesses, hence the birth of tons of printing farms and print-on-demand services.
After all, what’s better than making a living doing the things you love?
What’s a Printing Farm?
As new opportunities in many industries have emerged, so has a printing farm's popularity. From tabletop gaming, prosthetics, jewelry, and even fashion, more and more industries are creating opportunities for 3D printing farm to provide their services.
If you’re not familiar, a printing farm is a recently popularized term to describe a business with a group of printers that work together to complete large-scale manufacturing demands and create products for clients. This could range from printing small 3D printed objects like miniatures, or big models like prototypes and real product parts.
Courtesy of Maximilian O. Schwarzbich
The size of these printing farms also varies significantly from just a few couple 3D printers to hundreds of them. Some choose to use FDM printers as they produce larger parts like prosthetics and prototypes, while others use resin printers for high-detailed miniatures and jewelry.
The most fun part of these printing farms? Harvest time!
Just like in real farms, printing farms will have harvest time from to time when their models are finished printing. Collecting finished models from all your printers is definitely one of the most satisfying moments for 3D printing enthusiasts.
If you are interested in making your own 3D printing farm, you might be curious about which printer you should choose to start this business. Well, keep reading to find out!
The Best 3D Printer for Printing Farm 2023
If you plan to create your own 3D printing farm in 2023, you might want to find some of the newest 3D printers on the market, making sure that your printers will still have the support they need for years to come.
Sonic Mega 8K S — Your Reliable Productivity Beast
Whether you are opening a printing farm for miniatures or life-size models for prototyping, the newly launched Sonic Mega 8K S is going to be a great choice. With 15 inches perforated build plate and a brand-new high-speed system, it’s going to boost your production like never before!
Designed specifically for rapid order completion, the Sonic Mega 8K S is capable of printing up to 600 layers/hour when combined with the ACF film and fast-curing resin like the TR300. This translates to completing a full plate of 6 cm models in less than 90 minutes or all the parts for a 50 cm tall model in just 32 hours.
The Sonic Mega 8K S is also compatible with an automated resin feeder system, the Pump & Fill*, and can be purchased together with its large post-processing companion: the Mega Cure S and Mega Wash S. With all these accessories in your workflow, it’ll make 3D printing such a breeze. Even when you are handling a taxing and time-consuming job like an immediate order of 100 miniatures to be finished with a three days deadline. But more about that later..
Sonic Mini 8K S — For Those Who Just Want to Create
Another printer that would be a great fit for starting a 3D printing farm in 2023 will be the Sonic Mini 8K S. Launched earlier in the year, it boasted a resolution of 22 µm—one of the highest-resolution consumer resin 3D printers in the market and is available at an affordable price point. With an XY resolution almost twice more detailed than the Sonic Mega 8K S, this will be a reliable tool when it comes to jewelry printing or small batches of miniatures.
If you are still unsure about how many orders you can take and you don’t have the space for such a huge printer like the Sonic Mega 8K S, you might want to consider the Sonic Mini 8K S. Compact and powerful, suitable for all your printing needs. Well, except if you want to print big, then definitely go with the Sonic Mega 8K S straight away.
Sonic Mighty 8K — Larger, But High-Resolution
What if you want to have the resolution of a Sonic Mini 8K S, but want to occasionally print larger models? Let us introduce you to the Sonic Mighty 8K!
Launched at the beginning of 2022, the Sonic Mighty 8K rocks a 28 µm resolution 8K LCD screen. Just a little bit less pixel density compared to the Sonic Mini 8K S, the Sonic Mighty 8K comes with a 50% larger screen, giving you a printing volume up to three times bigger.
As the icing on top, the Sonic Mighty 8K also comes with a camera function that connects to an app so you can check your printing progress wherever you are. And if this is your first-time 3D printing, its beginner-friendly user interface is going to be a great addition to your 3D printing experience.
Fulfilling Urgent Orders as a Printing Farm
To give you a better idea of what to consider when choosing the printer for your print farm, let’s meet John Smith!
John is the owner of a 3D printing farm and has previously worked with a farm full of Sonic Mighty 8K printers. To be exact, he owns nine of those and has been working with them for a year. However, as his 3D printing business grows and more orders are coming in, he’s been looking to expand his business even further by getting some new printers. To start, he decided to add the new Sonic Mega 8K S printer to his farm after finding that the printers could print 6 cm models in less than 1.5 hours.
This morning, John received an urgent order for a hundred 8 cm tall bust models to be delivered in just three days. All of the models in this order need to have the same level of quality, so it’s either using nine of his Sonic Mighty 8K printers or putting his new Sonic Mega 8K S printer to the test.
John needs to make a decision asap.
The goal is to complete a hundred models in less than three days, which includes printing time and post-processing. To complete this, John needs all the speed he can have.
He started by throwing the 3D model into a slicer software. The Sonic Mega 8K S can comfortably fit eleven of this model into a single plate while the Sonic Mighty 8K can only fit four.
After keying his parameters and slicing, the Sonic Mega 8K S will take 1.8 hours to complete one full plate. In comparison, the Sonic Mighty 8K will need 8 hours to complete the print.
It’s a no-brainer, John told himself.
He makes a quick calculation on a random scrap paper. The Sonic Mega 8K S could complete 100 models in just eighteen hours, and the 9 of his Sonic Mighty 8K together will still take 24 hours.
For a 3D printing farm, production speed and efficiency are crucial. Completing orders fast means you can accept more orders and gain more. However, it’s still super important to understand your needs and your clients’ needs.
If your clients are jewelers looking for a print-on-demand studio to create their jewelry mold, the Sonic Mega 8K S might not be the best fit for you as details and the highest resolution possible could be something that you need to put more emphasis on, in comparison to speed. But if you are looking for a production beast to mass-produce miniatures and figurines, definitely consider getting the Sonic Mega 8K S!
